


Powers: Of Life, And Death

by ZanderNyrond



Series: The Way Back Again [2]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1984-12-13
Updated: 1984-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 11:59:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13007316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZanderNyrond/pseuds/ZanderNyrond
Summary: In the second part of The Way Back Again, Blake encounters mysterious stranger Ethan Powers, various people return from the dead, and Gauda Prime happens. Sort of. And this is where the story really starts.





	Powers: Of Life, And Death

POWERS:

OF LIFE, AND DEATH

It was a room like any other in the building, an anonymous office painted in neutral shades and furnished in brushed steel and grey. The men and woman in it, likewise, were distinguishable in no outward respect from any of the Alpha grade citizens who strolled the broad, camera-lined avenues outside.

"I don't believe it," the taller of the two men said. He was big and broad, with short-cropped curly hair the colour of old leather and a small beard; his face wore an expression of intense boredom. His name was Teleb. "It's been too long, he could never have wandered around for this long without being seen…" He moved away from the wall against which he had been lounging and spread his hands. "He must be dead."

"The scanners don't lie," the woman behind the desk said icily.

"Such naïveté," the other man commented from the depths of his armchair. "You really believe that, don't you, Kasso?"

The woman showed her teeth. They were very white, as was her skin. She carried a predatory air around with her which only her smile could dispel. She wore deep blue. "As a matter of fact," she said, "I do."

"What about you, Ziranne?" Teleb said.

Ziranne shrugged. His pointed nose twitched. His gaze darted from Kasso to Teleb and back. "Does it matter what I believe?"

"The point is," Kasso said a little sharply, "the records say that the man is dead. The scanners, on the other hand, say that he is alive, and in our sector. Can you think of anyone who would come here pretending to be him?"

"Put that way, it does seem a bit pointless," Teleb admitted.

"Where is he supposed to have been seen?" Ziranne heaved himself up and smoothed down his peach-coloured jerkin. The impression of fat that haunted him when seated promptly vanished: his body was wiry and well-kept. "I suppose we'd better send some thugs out..."

"Will you stop calling them thugs," Teleb broke in wearily.

"When they stop being thugs," Ziranne replied. "That's reasonable."

"The sighting," Kasso broke in once more, "was here on Donnaiya. But no troops. Teleb, I want you to go. Alone. We've calibrated a tracer from the scanner signal...you should be able to follow his trail as long as he stays on the planet. Ziranne, be ready with backup, Teleb will get in touch with you as soon as he has anything to report."

The two men bowed. "As you order, Commander."

Kasso got up and went to the door. "Take care, Teleb." She took his head in her hands and kissed him. "Don't do anything silly."

"I won't," Teleb promised, and left the room, followed by Ziranne. Kasso, alone, stared at the closed door.

"I must admit I never expected to get a visit from you, Blake," she murmured.

 

_I. I. I. I. I._

Stray particles of matter orbited randomly around a forgotten world, a world that had held the mirror rather too closely up to nature. Most of these particles consisted of undifferentiated molecular ooze, flash-frozen by the cold of space. Some were fragments of metal, glass, plastic, or fibre. A few answered to none of these descriptions; but in each of these there glimmered a tiny spark of unreleased energy.

_I. I. I._

The area over which the particles were spread was quite large, being bounded on one side by the planetoid's atmosphere and on the other by the outer limits of its effective gravitational field. As things stood, the odds against any one of the charged particles colliding with another in its orbit were astronomically large.

Yet, somehow, it happened. Two particles touched and clung.

_I + I = I am._

The space around the abandoned world was clear. There were no unusual gravitational or magnetic stimuli.

Yet, somehow, subtle perturbations were introduced into the orbits of the changed particles: Perturbations that conduced to further collisions between them. Strangely enough, none of these collisions ended in the two particles flying off in new directions. Always, the victims of the collision melded together, and the spark within them glowed brighter.

 _I am. I am. I am_.

Intelligence is more than a mere abstraction, a chemical process. It has power. It can exert a perceptible influence over its physical environment through the medium of the structures that support it. One particle orbits randomly; two move with slightly more determination, seeking a third.

Three...

Five...

_More..._

+AUTO-INTEGRATION INITIALISED AND PROCEEDING. ESTIMATED TIME TO REATTAINMENT OF FULL CAPACITIES: SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-EIGHT STANDARD HOURS.+

In the sky above Terminal, an aggregation of debris began to form.

***********

Subcommander Teleb of Federation Intelligence quitted Donnaiya Port at noon on a brilliant summer day. He was dressed unassumingly as an Alpha grade civilian of no discernible occupation, his beard was trimmed and his eyes were firmly focused on the tracer in his right hand.

Donnaiya is a middle-sized world notable only for its status as the last stop before the frontier world and open planet Gauda Prime. It boasts a record of tranquillity and peace unequalled in the Galaxy since the period scholars have come to know as _pre-Blake_ , so much so, indeed, that the spread of Commissioner Sleer's pacification programme had halted just short of Donnaiya's sector, and, thanks to Kasso's, Ziranne's and Teleb's determined efforts, seemed likely to remain at bay. Such, at least, was the position on this particular sunny day, and the people on the broad main street of Port City seemed determined to show it. Gaily dressed Betas and Gammas shared the air and the warmth with conservative Alphas and grey-clad Deltas. Couples strolled by, arm in arm, heads close together in earnest discussion of weighty matters. The odd black-uniformed guard and the regularly spaced, pole-mounted spy cameras did nothing to detract from the overall niceness of everything, and if there was a slight sense of—what can one say—theatre about the view, a sense perhaps of feverish activity beneath the surface, no-one was likely to draw attention to it.

It was all lost on Teleb. He had attention only for the green light of his tracer, and its sudden quickening as he turned to the left, down the street towards the Delta zone, the residential and industrial quarter reserved exclusively for those referred to in many an official broadcast as _the backbone of the Federation_.

There was a spring in his step as he hurried off. With luck this would be over soon.

Many hours later, footsore and weary, he began to feel that maybe it would never in fact end. The dingy streets and alleys of the Delta quarter had long ago taken his sense of direction and tossed it derisively over their rooftops; he wandered in a universe of damp, poorly mixed ferrocrete, rusted metal, broken glass and rubbish.

The tracer in his hand was adamant, though. Blake had come this way.

Part of Teleb still doubted it, spy cameras and tracers and everything notwithstanding. He had made an intensive study of Blake’s file, had gathered every scrap of information to be had. The man was dead, had died on Jevron, that was the official truth which everyone knew. And as far as Teleb was concerned, it was better that it remain so. Blake the man was puny and mortal enough, and it mattered little enough in itself whether he lived or died; but once let him be seen to be alive, and nothing could prevent the reawakening of Blake the concept. And Blake the concept was neither mortal nor puny.

Even now, with only the merest seed of suspicion planted in Teleb's mind, that concept exerted its grim power over him. His back prickled as though he were being watched; visions rose in his mind of hordes of outwardly harmless citizens, carrying Blake like an icon in their hearts, tracking his progress from rooftop and cellar window, and preparing to descend upon him like ravening wolves...

He looked up at the moon, and did not see it. Of course not, this was not Earth. The event that had endowed Terra with her oversized satellite was vanishingly rare in the known galaxy. So, no werewolves. Teleb laughed aloud at himself, but the sound was brittle, and the flaking walls around him deadened it.

This was getting him nowhere. He took a deep breath, regretting it almost instantly, dispelled the image of a colossal Blake-figure brooding over him with arms folded, and returned his attention to the tracer. He had almost strayed off the trail, but a cut through a three-foot-wide gap noisome with ancient refuse put him right once more.

Yet his mind kept wandering...

The image of Kasso rose before his inner eyes. His Commanding Officer, stern and cold on duty, a leader of men. They had grown up in NordEurop dome together, the three of them, Kasso, Teleb and Ziranne, they had explored life together and enjoyed together the privileged upbringing that was the portion of those earmarked from childhood for Federation Intelligence.

Once only had their friendship gone through the refiner's fire, when adolescence turned the tides of their natures to fierce flood, and Kasso had felt compelled to make a choice between them. Teleb and Ziranne had fought bitterly for the right to her, and each in turn had won, and lost: for Kasso, having tried both in succession, had found herself after all unable to choose. One was too intense, the other too superficial, and her only happiness was in the presence of both. With joy they had renewed their pledge of mutual trust and affection, and partly by luck and partly thanks to some heavy tugs on a few strategic strings, they had remained together through Command training and been assigned as a team to this, their first off-Earth Command. The relationship they had evolved satisfied all three of them without interfering with the exigencies of duty.

Kasso...Kasso's body beneath him, arching and writing as if galvanised by the ferocity of his love...and then soothed by the gentle, giving tenderness of Ziranne...Kasso...

There was a noise up ahead and Teleb brought himself back to attention sharply. Something scuttled away among the debris. A rat? A rebel? Maybe a rebel rat, he thought with an attempt at whimsy, but that image was even worse than all the others, and he shook his head to banish it.

Was it his imagination, or was the trail getting stronger?. Teleb pressed forward. Could he, Teleb, succeed where even the monster Travis had failed—could he locate and capture the legendary Blake? _Oh, Kasso, my love, your faith in me…_

A man stepped unhurriedly from the shadows.

"Got the time, citizen?" The voice too casual, even as Teleb looked at his watch he knew it was a trap and tried to turn but too late, and something burst against the back of his head with shattering force. The world spun around Teleb, he fumbled for his gun, saw the flash of bare steel in the man's hand, felt himself grasped and held as the steel came up—

AGONY!

Searing white agony in his left eye, flickering/turning to red. He screamed and felt his knees give, heard the tracer fall and scutter across the ground as he collapsed.

Warm wetness on his cheek. Hands going through his pockets, taking his communicator, his ident and all his possessions. Footsteps retreating.

For a time there was the flashing green light of the tracer to watch.

Then that, too, dimmed and went out.

***********

Roj Blake, meanwhile, was getting markedly impatient.

Granted it was a nice day for a walk, if you accepted the harsh, white sunlight which the atmosphere diffused over the whole sky without in any significant degree attenuating it. This was no justification for the bizarre treatment to which he was being subjected. Maybe he was out of touch; it was after all some considerable time since he had had any contact with the Rebellion, and indeed, travelling exclusively on Federation starliners and hence limited to official information sources, he had begun to wonder whether such a thing as a rebellion could exist at all, here in the prosperous, happy Galactic Federation, where affairs were swiftly getting back to normal after the slight hiccup caused by the Andromedan invasion.

Maybe he _was_ out of touch. Yet not even the most stringent security precautions encountered in the past had prepared him for the rigmarole his anonymous contact had specified: a plunge into the depths of the Delta sector of the town, a Brownian ramble round a seemingly endless series of identically squalid back streets, and finally a circuitous return to the very main street he had started from.

It had better be worth it, Blake reflected grimly.

The shop was in sight. He hastened towards it, keeping his face turned away from the pole-mounted spy-camera. Since that bad moment at the Port, he had had to go out of his way to avoid the inquisitive lenses which seemed indispensable to the comfort of the people of Donnaiya. Maybe he was no longer at the top of the Federation's hit list, but he didn't want to find that out from President Servalan herself. Or whoever was President these days. There seemed to be some disagreement.

He read the faded lettering on the dusty, smeared windows of the shop:

**E POWERS**

Licensed Pawnbroker

PAWNS BROKEN WHILE YOU WAIT

Blake smiled at the whimsy of the last line, glanced sardonically up at his reflection in the lowest of the three gilded spheres that hung over the door, and went in.

Inside was dark and dust, a choking, blinding miasma that hung in the air and danced in the beams of sunlight that penetrated the window. All around him piles of—of _things_ —hulked and leaned and sprawled, huge heaps of loose paper, tottery stacks of old printed books, ancient spools of tape or film, dusty black discs of vinyl with sound encoded in the spiralling grooves on each side. Rather unlikely stuff for a pawnbroker, Blake thought as he threaded his way between swaying wooden racks on which ancient _objets d'art et de vertu_ , mechanical devices at whose purpose even Blake the trained technician could only guess, cardboard boxes of old electronic parts and ceramic models of unrecognisable subject-matter and execrable workmanship languished, gathered dust and cobwebs, and awaited a reclamation that would never come. Blake noted the parallel with his own state but refused to give it thought. Anyway, this was his reclamation. Or so he hoped.

"Can I help you?"

The voice, light and amused-sounding, arose from somewhere further back in the shop, beyond a doorway which sunlight falling from a ceiling window beyond transformed into a shimmering curtain of radiant, shifting opacity. As Blake watched a man seemed to float into view from behind the light-curtain.

"Roj Blake, isn't it?" It was a man, through the length of the flowing white hair and the cut of the floor-length purple robe made it hard to be certain, particularly with so much back lighting. Pale blue eyes twinkled at Blake.

"Yes," Blake said. "Who are you?"

"My name is..." The man paused for a second, then shook his head in good-natured annoyance. "Oh, I put it on the window, didn't I? Ah well, Ethan Powers as usual, then."

"And what do you have for me, Ethan Powers?" Blake continued.

Powers cocked his head and looked oddly at Blake: for an instant a shiver ran down his spine at the expression in those pale eyes.

"Why," Powers said softly, "only the rest of your life, Roj Blake."

Then he turned away and the mocking lilt returned to his voice.

"I also have some genuine un-flavoured-with-sawdust-and-suppressants-type Earth-grown tea if you happen to be into that sort of thing. Come upstairs," he adopted a throaty contralto, "and we can get down to it."

They climbed a flight of steps that creaked alarmingly and oozed moisture under the pressure of Blake's boots, and entered a room if possible even more cluttered than the shop. Ethan Powers swept a pile of books off one armchair, and directed Blake to the former. While he was finding out that the fur cushion underneath the books was in fact a large and bellicose grey cat, Powers engaged in manipulations involving water, tea, and various metal and ceramic vessels.

"Ah, yes," he said over his shoulder, "you can talk about your microwave ovens and electric kilt-stretchers."

After a pause, Blake, perching on the arm of the chair and sucking his gouged wrist, said, "I wasn't."

"I know you weren't," Powers said. "I just said you could, if you wanted to. Are you going to be boring and demand that we stick to business?"

"Well," Blake said, "I don't know how you run things here, but for myself I do rather prefer not to stay too long in one place. So if you could get to the point..."

"Oh, I can get to the point," Powers said, "but we won't be staying in one place. Short and brutal it is, then. I have certain information which has put me in the position of being able to save your life. I have already set a plan in motion to this end, acting on the assumption that you would agree with my objective. All you have to do is to leave here, go into hiding for about two months, doesn’t matter where, and then take passage to Gauda Prime, preferably on a non-commercial ship. There you'll meet me, and I'll tell you the rest. All right?"

He turned away to pour tea into two cups.

"Hold on," Blake said, "you can't just leave it at that."

"I've told you all you need to know," Powers said blandly. "Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"I need something more than that," Blake protested. "I need some kind of proof before I'll accept your story. What are you _saving_ me from? How are you doing it? Where do you get your information? How do I know," he finished with emphasis, "that I can trust you?"

Powers gave him a sweet, sad smile.

"It's a bit late for that, isn't it?" he said, handing Blake a cup. "I wouldn’t drink it, it's poisoned. The dull ache you feel in the back of your skull is where you were hit by the five separate bands of bludgeon-wielding ruffians who jumped you as you were making your pilgrimage through the Delta zone. The door of the shop is now locked and seven hundred Federation troopers are surrounding the building. Sugar? No, probably not. Your path doesn't lead anywhere at all unless you’re prepared to trust, Blake; you aren't Avon, and scepticism doesn't go with your tarboosh. I could have had you seven ways to a Sunday if I wanted."

Blake considered this for a moment.

"Also," Powers went on, "if I were to tell you what, how, where etcetera you would almost certainly walk out, and that would ruin my whole day."

"But ..." Blake sought for words. "Suppose I walk out anyway?" he said at last. "For all I know you could just be a lunatic."

"I could, too, couldn't I?" Powers said, seemingly taken with the idea. "Best not just at the moment, though, maybe. Well: so you want proof. All right, then. Try this."

Everything abruptly vanished around Blake in a blaze of light.

As his vision returned, he found himself seated on a white wrought-iron chair in the middle of empty space. Beside him Powers hovered on huge golden wings, sporting an impressive aureole and seemingly untroubled by the lack of air to support him.

Frantically Blake tried to find the flaw in the illusion, tried to detect the all too familiar feel of mental tampering. There was nothing. It was real.

As if from a great distance he heard Powers's voice.

"Oh well. At least this way you can't very well walk out."

**************

Meanwhile, in the sky around Terminal, an object shaped somewhat like an elongated hermit crab orbited lazily. At its focus, the mouth of the shell, rectangular slabs of old-gold light pulsed and flickered ever stronger across a russet-coloured hemisphere. Behind it the shell stretched out to a needle point. In front of it the skeleton of the flight deck formed the claws of the crab. The extremities and edges... _twinkled_.

The enzyme cloud through which the Liberator had passed had taken over the substance of the great ship, warping and dissolving it, changing it into itself like the green slimes of Ndüma. Now, its reactive power spent, the remnant of semi-fluid ooze drifting around Terminal found itself in turn seized and taken over by a stronger force, an organising force: seized and transformed into tarial-like cells, introction process components and the ultra-sophisticated germanium circuitry.

It was not an efficient process. Mass had to be converted into energy to power the transformation, which meant that there was nowhere near enough to recreate the Liberator _in situ_.

+COMPUTER BANKS THREE, SEVEN, EIGHT AND TWELVE RESTORED TO FULL FUNCTION. RE-CIRCUITING.+

Zen considered. There was no way to obtain mass from the planet Terminal itself: to attempt to skim the atmosphere in his current condition was to court an undignified plunge to the surface. The nearest safely available mass...

Slowly, slowly, the hermit crab turned until the needle point faced the vaguely lenticular cloud that was the Galaxy. In stark contrast to its whiteness, yet far too distant for human eyes to distinguish, a crimson blot stood out near the centre.

It would, of course, be inconceivable to postulate that any thought of revenge might have crossed Zen's simple, puissant mind.

One task remained, and Zen performed it.

+SENSORS INDICATE THAT THE ONES TO WHOM THE LIBERATOR IS UNDER OBLIGATION ARE NO LONGER DETECTABLE ON THE PLANET SURFACE. NEITHER IS THE ONE CALLED ORAC.+

Terminal faded at once from the forefront of Zen's consciousness. Ponderously, impelled by a power for which no generators existed in the Liberator's engineering section, by no drive known to anyone now living, the skeletal Liberator moved off towards where the main mass of the enzyme cloud glowed and roiled, unaware of what was about to hit it.

***********

Back in the undistinguished building on Donnaiya, Kasso sat alone in her office and worried. Teleb's last report indicated that he was going into the Delta quarter, and that had been several hours ago. Strictly speaking, the job of monitoring the communicator could have been delegated to a junior, and Kasso should have gone to her home long since: yet she stayed, ears glued to an open channel, waiting and worrying.

A chime sounded, making her jump. "Come."

Ziranne entered. "It's me," he said unnecessarily. "Any news?"

"D'you think I'd still be here if there were?" Kasso snapped. Then she realised. "Sorry, my love. But he should have reported by now."

Ziranne took one of her clenched fists and pried the fingers apart. The marks of her nails stood out red and angry in the middle of her palm.

"A little tighter and you'd have drawn blood," he remarked with a wry smile. "Is it doing him any good? All this tension?"

"Don't be fatuous," Kasso retorted. "What else can I do?"

"Save the panic," Ziranne said quietly, "for when hours turn into days. If they do. He may report back before sunrise... there are any number of reasons why he may be delayed."

Kasso took several deep breaths and tried to see the logic of Ziranne's argument. It was as if he was trying to shut down an army of little voices all screeching at once _: Teleb's dead, Teleb's hurt, Teleb's imprisoned..._

"Yes," she said. "Of course, you're right." She got up. "I'll get one of the guards on night duty to monitor the link."

Ziranne's smile returned. "Good. Favour in return?"

"Anything."

"Come home with me and keep me from climbing the wall."

Kasso put her arms around Ziranne's neck.

"It's a bargain," she whispered.

"And if he hasn't reported by the morning we'll get the thugs out as we should have done in the first place."

A shadow crossed Kasso's face.

"You don't... Ziranne, you don't think Blake has got him, do you?"

For a moment she saw the steely coldness behind Ziranne's cheerful façade.

"If he has, my darling," he said slowly, "then what we shall do to Roj Blake will make the late and unlamented Travis look like a kindly old uncle."

Then the smile came back. "But in the meantime, let us retire to sleep the sleep of the just."

But there was no sleep for them that night.

************

Teleb awoke to a world half white, blurred and consisting mostly of ceiling.

"Lie still," said a voice, female, middle-aged. "It's all right, you're safe here. You've had a bad knock on the head, and I'm afraid we were too late to save the eye, but if you stay still and quiet for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, you'll be all right otherwise."

"Uh...ah...anh," Teleb managed. "Ng ... _ngh_ ..."

"Don't try to talk. Just lie quiet. My husband will be here in a minute...he's a doctor."

Teleb looked at the ceiling and tried to think. His head hurt terribly, and there was an aching grey confusion in his mind. He had been...had been looking for something...for someone? And...but it was so hard. It _hurt_...

Something nearby was emitting a high, thin whining that irritated him. After a moment he realised it was his own voice. He tried to stop it, but he couldn't recall how.

"It's no good, Kris, he can't stand the pain," said another voice, a man's, gravelly, concerned. "We'll have to put him under again."

Then everything slid away.

He woke later to the sound of voices raised.

"That doesn't necessarily make him one of ours, Kris. What if he's a spy? You know how Federation Intelligence works."

"But he was only three doors away from us, Lan, he must have been ..."

"You're not listening. Even if he was looking for us, that doesn't mean he's a rebel. Consider this. Spucher has always insisted that no-one get into our meetings who isn't known both to him and at least one other person. Now everyone got a good look at him when we found him, didn't they? Anyone seem to recognise him? Kris, he's not one of us."

"And suppose you're right, Lan? Suppose he is a spy?" The woman's voice was challenging: Teleb strained to follow the words but they made no sense to him. "What would you do, Lan?"

"Blast it, Kris..." There was confusion in the man's voice, and doubt. "I'm a doctor, not a freedom fighter. What else could I do but what I am doing?"

"I don't know, Lan. You must do as you see fit."

"The safety of the group..."

His attention drifted. The pain was still there, and worsening steadily.

"...go and see Spucher. If he says to get rid of him, then..."

"...hope you can square it with your conscience, Lan."

A door closed. All of a sudden he was wide awake, and aware of being alone.

He had to get out. He tried to raise his head, and everything went black. He waited, motionless, till it passed and then inched up further, and again the dark wing descended. Thus, in wingbeats, he sat up...gained his feet...steadied himself against the windowsill and looked cautiously around.

It purported to be a doctor's surgery, normal enough. He studied the racks of ampoules ranged on shelves around the walls, fighting the blurring that afflicted his good eye. Through the blotting pain in his head he managed to dredge up scraps of knowledge, culled he knew not where...those were for sleeping, those for healing...and those were for staying awake.

His hands seemed larger than normal, and he fumbled getting the ampoule into the spray hypo. As the drug spread through his bloodstream the dark fog receded from his mind and the world steadied and became cruelly clear. They had spoken of getting rid of him...they were after him...he had to get out.

There was a plastic sack in one drawer, which he stuffed full of the stay-awake ampoules and another hypo. A blow with one shoe shattered the glass of the window and he looked out on a narrow brick-lined alley. Carefully he removed the shards from the frame and eased himself through. It would not do to be leaving traces of blood that they could identify.

 _Traces_. There was something he ought to remember. _Traces...trace...tracer_...but trying to think only brought back the pain. He began to run, stumbling, staggering, bouncing off the walls, the plastic sack jolting against his thigh.

*************

"I," said Ethan Powers, doing a barrel roll in mid-space, "am what some people call a damned nuisance and others call a demiurge."

Blake had given up trying to disbelieve the illusion. There was no flaw in it that he could detect; the state of the art of mental put-and-take must have improved since his last experience. Either that or...

"And what," he said, forcing lightness into his voice, "is a demiurge when it's at home?"

"Actually, it hardly ever is," Powers said, sipping his tea. "What it means, basically, is that reality is my modelling plastic. I manipulates it, I does. You probably think we're still in the pawnshop and that I've made you believe we're in space sitting on wrought iron chairs and not breathing a lot. Actually, we are in space and I’m taking care of your breathing needs, which is damned decent of me considering your attitude, but thanks to the experience you've had of implanted memories there's no way I can give you any conclusive proof. Drink your tea, it'll get cold."

"All right," Blake said. "Whether it's an illusion or not, there's no way I can break it, so I am effectively at your mercy. Do whatever you're going to do and get it over with."

"You wanted the details," Powers said. "You'll get them. All of them. Watch." He selected a direction, pointed, and Blake had the sensation of moving at a fantastic speed: the stars bellied out around him, and before he could do more than clutch reflexively at his seat a world had rushed out of nowhere and hit them.

"Terminal," Powers said, and the word seemed to echo strangely in Blake’s head. "Now watch this..."

For the next few hours (in subjective time) Blake was treated to a potted run-down of the doings of his erstwhile comrades from the moment of the Liberator's explosion. With nonchalant ease Powers wrenched him from one planet to another, and Blake watched with a sinking feeling as the man whose intellect he had so admired stumbled from one massive fiasco into another, incapably abetted by a team of comic pirates of whom the only one to emerge in any remotely favourable light was Vila. And as for Avon himself...

"He depended on you more than he realised," Powers commented, as they floated away from Beta Five. "His brain, you see, is digital whereas yours is analogue. He can think but he can't measure. When you vanished he found himself increasingly trying to _be_ you, to follow your path, which of course was foredoomed to failure, and when he lost the Liberator it was a blow to his ego that he never acknowledged but from which he never recovered."

"But why did he keep trying?" Blake said. "When I said he could have the Liberator I didn't specify that he had to carry on the fight—hell, I didn't specify anything. No strings, he said, and I honoured that. Why did he carry on?"

Powers looked at Blake with his head on one side, as he had in the pawnshop.

"You'd have to ask him that," he said. "I don't think I'll ever understand it myself."

"So what happened then?" Blake said.

"They went to Malodaar," Powers said, "over here on your right. Please do not feed the creepy scientists."

After the Malodaar episode Blake pleaded for time to rest.

"I may actually be moving or I may not," he said, "but my stomach thinks I am. Give me a moment."

"As much time as you like," Powers said. "Shall I provide commercials?"

“No, but if you have something to eat that might help.”

They remained motionless for ten minutes, while Powers produced food and drink from nowhere, and Blake's disbelief took several more knocks. If it was illusory food and drink, then the illusion was complete in every detail.

"I think we can skip the Zukan episode," Powers said, "you have the general idea, after all. Leave us pass on to the biggest frod-up of all: Gauda Prime."

"What happened on Gauda Prime?" Blake said.

"You died," Powers said. "Finally. And so did Vila, Dayna, Tarrant and Soolin."

Blake shifted in his seat. "I presume you're not telling me this simply to make my flesh creep."

"Oh no. I do have some kind of perversion of the course of justice in view, never fear." Gauda Prime floated towards them. "Slow enough? Good."

"You didn't mention Avon."

"No," Powers said. “No, I didn’t.”

They entered atmosphere over a lush and extensive forest. Blake suddenly noticed that he wasn't breathing, started to suffocate and took a lungful of air just in time.

"Swallow," Powers said.

Blake obediently swallowed.

"No, over there," Powers said, pointing as the fork-tailed fowl in question soared above a bank of cloud. "Imported about forty-two years ago. Done fairly well, actually."

"Er...yes," Blake said. "What about Avon?"

"Duck," said Powers.

"Where?" Blake said, and then threw himself sideways as a huge rusty-brown wedge-shaped spaceship split the air, passing them at a distance of about nine feet.

Powers was roaring with laughter.

"Sorry," he gasped, "couldn't resist it."

"Isn't that..." Blake controlled himself with an effort and changed the course of his question. "Isn't that the Scorpio?"

There was a crash, and a belch of smoke and flame, followed by a long grinding ploughing noise that seemed to go on for several days.

"Yes," Powers said into the silence that followed, "it was."

"Is that it, then?"

"No, of course not. If you're interested, at this moment Avon and his merry band are heading over that way, Tarrant is ignoring the flight computer’s dying speech which is rather a shame because it was meant to be quite poignant and all, and you are coming this way in a flier."

"About Avon," Blake said as they touched ground in an undevastated area of the forest. "What..."

"I don't know," Powers said irritably. "I've been very careful not to look." He silenced Blake with an upraised hand. "There are many theories about history-changing. One states that it is possible to change history, but that somewhere in time a dedicated band of people have set themselves up as a Time Patrol or whatever to prevent such changes. Another says that Time itself resists such changes, either by not letting you act on the past or by slowly springing back to shape like rubber. Yet another states that all the changes that have actually happened have been taken into account, so that anyone with a time machine who doesn't like the world he's in knows that there's no point in changing it because someone will change it back. Other theories invoke the doctrine of alternate worlds." He sat down abruptly and began to plait his hair. "Load of rubbish if you ask me."

"What's your theory?" Blake said.

"I don't have one. I play by ear. Do you play by ear? No, man, I usually play round the corner. Ha, ha. Joke. You’re supposed to laugh." Powers seemed fiercely intent on his plaiting. “I'm working on the principle that appearance is everything. Heisenberg had it backwards. The Certainty Principle."

"I see."

"No, you don't." Powers leapt to his feet, the half-formed plait unravelling. "How can you see? This is the first time you've ever encountered time travel, you poor sap. Not to mention me...and I can tell you since you ask that I've been not mentioned in more royal palaces and great houses than anyone except possibly Roj Blake, and he's just a modified solar myth anyway." He collapsed against a tree, weeping bitterly. " _Tout de monde médit sur moi/Sauf les muets, ca va de soi_...why do there have to be so _many_ of me?"

Blake retreated a pace. Powers heard the movement and whipped round, tear-reddened eyes blazing. "Oh no, you don't. You're not getting away from me till the alternate line's solid. Do you play Bézique?"

"Play what?"

"No, I thought not. No-one does. Barbaric game anyway. Blood sports should be banned. Blood should be banned...bands should be bled...Blake should be blind..." He passed a hand across his forehead. "What time is it?"

"How should I know?" Blake demanded.

Powers wet his finger and held it up, stopped to pick up a curiously whorled pebble and study it, and produced from a back pocket a printed novel with a lurid cover, which he opened at random and stabbed into with the wet finger.

" _Cheese-grater_ ," he read. "Ah, we seem to have some time on our hands. Come on. You're It." He slapped Blake playfully on the shoulder and dashed off into the trees. "Come on," he called back. "No-one's watching."

Blake, partly from a feeling that it might be wise to watch Powers closely (or at least not to go against his wishes) and partly for reasons he could not bring himself to admit to, followed on, breaking into a run as he saw the flash of purple among the woodland green and brown.

He hadn't played Tag in years.

***************

If a non-sentient organism could suffer, then the enzyme cloud was doing just that.

The Liberator bore steadily into the heart of it, growing now at a vastly accelerated rate, assimilating the raw life-stuff all around it. The main hull was complete, and the vessel was moving under power, turning slowly as the twinkling, coruscating outlines of the three subsidiary nacelles took on form and solidity.

Memory was complete.

Zen's store of knowledge, carried in part within each of those tiny particles of sapience that had floated around the artificial planet, was fully collated, parsed and restored to integral existence, and augmented: for now that the tables were turned, Zen was able to collect as much data on the enzyme cloud and its dangers as the sensors could extract. He would not be caught unawares again.

Completion was attained. The ship moved out of the stricken cloud, now reduced to a few tenuous wisps and threads against the black of outer space. It paused.

Zen's sensors roved throughout the length and breadth of the vessel whose heart and brain he was. The flight deck, the teleport section, the chambers that had been full of the necessities of life before, that would be full again once the crew had been re-located: all was in order.

For a moment every light on Zen's fascia blazed brilliantly, and a single signal went out on all wavebands to the uncaring Galaxy:

**+ZEN!+**

And on a far-off planet, where a people deprived of their all-powerful computer ruler tried to scrape a living amid the ruins of decadence, a few saw uncomprehendingly where the signal was received, and one or two wondered what the old machines were doing.

Then the main drive cut in, and the Liberator plunged into the mass of stars spread out before it.

+OBLIGATION MUST BE FULFILLED. ROJ BLAKE, JENNA STANNIS, VILA RESTAL, KERR AVON, CALLY, DAYNA MELLANBY, AND DEL TARRANT ARE TO BE LOCATED. ALSO THE ONE CALLED ORAC.+

It crossed Zen’s mind that they might be dead, in which case the task would fail and obligation must be honoured another way. That, however, was a consideration for the future. For the moment there was a goal, and he would attain it if it were attainable.

However long it took.

**************

Ziranne and Kasso dragged themselves into the office an hour and ten minutes late.

"Any news?" Kasso demanded.

"N-None, Commander," the guard replied, handing back the communicator.

"You stayed on it all night?" Ziranne snapped.

"Certainly, Subcommander," the guard said, "as ordered."

"All right," Kasso muttered ungraciously. "Dismissed."

"I'll put out the order," Ziranne said as the guard made his retreat. "How many squads?"

"As many as it takes, Subcommander Ziranne," Kasso said. "Start with five and if nothing turns up by the end of the day, double that. This is a serious matter of planetary security."

"As you order, Commander," Ziranne said formally. "Shall I circulate the name?"

Kasso tried to think. Her head ached. She buzzed the medical unit for something to relieve it.

"What?"

"The name," Ziranne prompted. "Do you want it circulated?"

"Uh...no. No, just description and rank. If we've got a picture, put that out. Just say he's wanted. And Ziranne, tell them to concentrate on the Delta zone."

"Commander..." The voice from the intercom made both of them start.

Kasso pounced. "Yes, what is it?"

"Message come in from Donnaiya Port City, Commander, a Doctor Lan Marquay reporting a robbery and a missing person."

"What the hell..." Kasso took a deep breath. "What is the significance of that, what makes it worth my attention?"

"Commander, the description of the missing person...it could be that of Blake."

"Blake?" Kasso echoed: then savagely, "Bring him up for questioning."

"The doctor, Commander?"

"No, the missing person, you idiot! Yes, of course I mean the doctor. Bring the doctor in for questioning. Oh, one thing. Would this doctor have been calling from the Delta zone, by any chance?"

"Why...yes, Commander, but how did you ...?"

"I guessed," Kasso said with a sharklike grin. "Kasso out."

She buzzed the medical unit for something for her headache. The absence of Teleb was like the absence of an arm or an eye. Never in her life had she been without both of them for long: now, deprived of one of them for only a day, she felt she was going mad, or dying.

"Hey, look at this," Ziranne said; he was glancing through the computer transcripts from the previous night. "Gauda Prime's applied for Federation membership. That means there'll be an observer coming out from Earth within the month." He laughed. "They've got a lot of cleaning up to do before that pest-hole gets membership. Why, I—"

"Ziranne," Kasso said carefully. "Shut up."

"Sorry," Ziranne said.

Kasso buzzed the medical unit. The medic in charge was quite short with her.

"Has she got three heads, or what?" he muttered as he killed the circuit.

*************

Night had descended on him. He could no longer walk without frequent stops. Names and faces he could no longer match swung in and out of his mind with maddening speed. Ziranne...Kasso...Teleb...Blake...Lan...Kris...it was all so confusing and all he wanted to do was sleep.

NO! Mustn't sleep. Hastily he grabbed for one of the ampoules in the sack and slammed it into the hypo. It took him three tries to get it into his arm.

Light seared his red-hot eye. The world was grainy, like an old hologram. He seemed to be outside some sort of eating place. Food would help. He staggered up the steps and had to clutch at the door jamb to save himself from falling: the bandage came away from his left eye and dropped to the floor, leaving darkness behind it.

"Here, you all right?"

Strong hands guiding him towards a seat. Grey tunics. Deltas.

"What's your name, friend?"

Someone was saying something to him, but it was too much effort to listen. He breathed deeply, thankfully.

"I said, what's your name?"

"Leave him alone, Ferra."

"Only want to know his name, don't I?" Breath on his face. "Oi, scarface. Here. Look at me when I'm talking to you, son. What’s…your…name?"

Hesitantly he searched for a name, but there was nothing left in the swirling confusion of his brain to give him any clue.

"Uh ..."

"Hard work this, eh?" Laughter.

"Ferra, can't you see he's exhausted? Let him be. He'll tell us his name soon enough."

"Here, hang on." Another voice. He felt his head being tipped back and light made him close his eye. "Look, mates. Lengthen his hair a bit, take off the beard...he'd be the living image of Blake, wouldn't he?"

"What, with that eye?"

It was a name he knew. Blake. He tried to say it. "B..."

"Could be, I suppose ..."

"No, never. Too broad. I saw Blake once, he was a little skinny guy."

"Shut up, he's saying something." Breath on his face again.

"Blake." He repeated it more strongly. "Blake..."

"He says that's his name, fellows. Your name Blake, mate?"

"Y..." He nodded. It was good to have a name. Maybe if he had a name these people would stop bothering him. "Yes..."

"Ferra, he can't be!"

"Why not, then, eh?"

"What would Blake be doing here?"

He tried to think. What would he be doing here?

Words came to him, and he tried to form them. "Captured..." It was such hard work. "Federation..."

"Feds got you, did they?"

"Y..."

"Ferra, why would Blake come here?"

"Look!" The voice called Ferra held anger. "I don't care who he is. He's hurt and exhausted, he needs help. Far as I'm concerned he can call himself what he likes. Right?"

Muttering.

"Now, Mingo's due back with the night's take, right? We’ve been doing well these last few weeks. I say that means we can afford to look after Blake here. Till he’s on his feet again."

More muttering.

"If he comes in with us he's your responsibility, Ferra."

"I know that, don't I?"

Blake's attention began to drift. He made a grab for the sack with the ampoules but he must have dropped it dropped it ...

The last he heard was Ferra's voice.

"And if the Feds come looking, there's been no-one here, right?"

**************

"It's a tricky job, this," Powers said, swinging by his hands from the branch of a tree.

"What, that?" Blake said. He had now finally discarded the illusion theory. If this were a structured entertainment for his benefit there would never have been all this hanging about doing nothing.

"No, no. Keeping everything going. Treading the knife edge between what's enough to work and what's too much to ignore."

"I'm curious," Blake said abruptly. Ignoring Powers' mumbled "Downright strange if you ask me" he got up from the grassy knoll and wandered over to lean against the tree trunk. "What do you gain from all this?"

Powers turned a neat somersault and landed on the ground. "Funny thing about absolute power," he said. "You get to hate absolutes."

"I read somewhere that absolute power corrupts absolutely."

"That chap wasn't talking about absolute power. He was talking about absolute responsibility. They're two different things."

"But linked, surely," Blake said, beginning to get interested.

"Not necessarily." Powers performed a stagy fall and sprawled on the grass, chin on arms. "Consider: What corrupts is not the ability to make stones sing or turn bread into wine. It's rulership that corrupts, which is only one of the incidental phenomena associated with power...having people under your thumb. That kind of power I wouldn't touch, at least not in my current mood. Truly absolute power dissolves all responsibility, anyway, because you can forestall the consequences of anything you do. Your fellow was talking about politics, which is about as rewarding an occupation as bailing out your leaky boat with a bucket made of tissue paper."

"Surely that's a rather...irresponsible viewpoint," Blake exclaimed.

"You said it," Powers said. "And now for twenty points, prove that irresponsibility equals corruption. Frankly, I wouldn't bother. Life's too short. Shall we go?"

"The time is ripe?" Blake said.

Powers sniffed the air. "No, I think it'll stay fresh for a while longer." He reached for an imaginary hat stand and produced a white pith helmet which he donned carefully. "Come along."

They walked through the endless trees to another clearing. "Wait here," Powers said, and went forward about three paces. He stood for a second, head bent, then turned and walked back.

A large section of the turf suddenly heaved itself upright, revealing a ramp leading down into darkness. Powers gestured. "After you."

Blake paused halfway down the ramp, accustoming his eyes to the gloom. He was looking at a large underground chamber in which a number of fliers were parked. At the far end was a door. Powers trotted over to the door and made occult gestures at it. It opened.

"Come here," he called, and Blake joined him.

A short corridor led to a large circular room dominated by a pair of curved consoles bracketing a swivel chair. A woman was studying a VDU in the wall next to the consoles.

"Little early. I'll jump forward a bit," Powers said.

Everything blurred and then steadied again, and Blake stared...

...Avon smiled and raised his gun. He seemed to be pointing directly at Blake,.

Everything faded. They were back in space.

"That's as far as I've looked ahead," Powers said.

"Why?" Blake said. "Why don't you know what happens next?"

"All right," Powers sighed. "I'll tell you. My power is _not_ absolute, not in this universe. I can change history, but...how can I put it?...the more people observe it, the more fixed it is. If _I_ observe it, then it's hopeless. See?"

"That's what you meant by Heisenberg in reverse," Blake ventured. "To observe a phenomenon, according to this theory, doesn't alter it, it renders it less susceptible to alteration."

"Yes," Powers said. "And through a spatio-temporal anomaly that I still haven't been able to figure out, a hell of a lot of people have observed what you just saw. The actions are fixed. I can't change them. For the same reason or something very like it, I can't alter the circumstances immediately prior to the bloodbath."

"So what can you do?"

"I'm in the process of finding that out." Powers pointed, and a world approached them obediently; from the brightness of the sun Blake knew it had to be Donnaiya. "I'm going to put you back now. Go to ground for a couple of months like I said, I'm sure you can manage that, and then take ship to G.P."

"And get myself killed?"

"No! Ye gods, do I have to explain everything?" Powers fumbled in mid-space and a blue stone appeared in his hand. He threw it at Blake, who caught it awkwardly. "When this turns green, go, and try not to get your left eye slashed open in the meantime, hmm?"

************

It was some weeks later that Blake slipped out of the Delta eatery, in the early hours of the morning. The Deltas had been kind to him, but he could only bring trouble upon them if he stayed any longer. Besides, he needed to be by himself.

The gaps in his memory puzzled him...not that they existed, but that they were so all-embracing. Nothing seemed to remain of his life prior to his arrival at the eatery, beyond the bare bones...he seemed to have lost even the faces of his companions, Kerr Avon, Vela...Vila?... Restal, and...and ...?

It must have been the Federation, of course. They had had him, had tried to clean out his brain yet again, that was it. And this time they had succeeded. He had to give them that. There were no flaws. Beyond his knowledge of the things he _should_ remember, there was nothing... it was like having a shopping list and not the groceries themselves.

Well, he would have to find out as much as he could. It would be no good contacting a rebel group in his present stage. He could imagine the dialogue:

"Hello, I'm Roj Blake."

"Oh yes? Prove it."

"What?"

"What did you do on such-and-such a day?"

"Er ..."

"What does Kerr Avon have for breakfast?"

"Um ..."

"What colour are Janna Stennis' eyes?"

"Pass?"

Hopeless.

Where to find out, though?

Libraries were out. You couldn't use a study carrel without an ident.

Suddenly he stood stock still. Of course! He could get back in touch with them personally!

The more he thought about it the better it seemed. They wouldn't ask awkward questions. He had been their leader. He could put out messages for them and meet them on some neutral planet, and then everything would be all right. Once he was back on the Liberator ...

Or was it the Liberator now? Hadn't that been destroyed?

Never mind that now. If he called, they would come.

He caught sight of his reflection in a window. The scar was unfortunate…and yet it would certainly prevent anyone recognising him. Why, he could hardly recognise himself.

Gauda Prime. It was handy, and not only neutral, it was open. Ideal. He would have to find some way of getting access to facilities once he was there, of course, but that shouldn't present too many problems.

So. Get to the port, take passage to Gauda Prime, find a base from which to work and summon his faithful crew to his side.

Blake walked off in the direction of the centre of Port City. There was a spring in his step.

**************

Maleus Garamite, owner and master of the free trader _Archbold_ , en route from Uanta to Arvid with a cargo best not looked at too closely, stared blankly at the sensor readouts.

"Belon!" he snapped. "Have you been monkeying with this again?"

"No, Mal, I haven't," the bulky first mate protested.

"Annis?" Garamite asked.

The pilot shook her head.

"I don't believe it," Garamite muttered. "This blip has to be wrong."

"It is big, isn't it?" Annis said quietly.

"Check visual," Garamite ordered, and Belon obeyed.

All three started at the screen open-mouthed.

"How long's it been here?" Garamite demanded.

"There's drive emissions of some kind from half a day ago," Belon reported. "Currently showing no signs of life."

"A derelict..." Annis murmured, as if to herself.

"Think of the reward for salvaging something like that," Belon whispered.

Annis's head swung round. "What?" she said scornfully.

"You said it was a derelict," Belon was immediately on the defensive.

"And I'm an authority suddenly?" Annis' tongue could deliver a charge like that of a neuronic whip. "Derelicts don't fly themselves into your path and then stop, you know. Where do you suppose it came from?"

"Who cares?" Belon snapped.

"Now listen..." Garamite began.

"Well," Annis said, spacing her words carefully, "all I know is, I wouldn't lay a finger on it." She stared at the back of Garamite's head. "I wouldn't be such a fool."

Garamite swung round. "Annis ...!"

Belon reddened. "Why, you jumped-up little..."

"SHUT UP!!" Garamite bawled. "Now," he said quietly, "why wouldn't you lay a finger on it, Annis?"

"A ship that size," Annis said, "has all sorts of potential dangers. And besides, you can't be sure of the life-sensor readings...particularly not on this ship."

Belon lurched from his seat with a wordless snarl, only to find himself stopped by a hand flattened against his midriff. "Sit down, Belon," Garamite said levelly. He had not looked away from Annis. "You seem very well-informed about the dangers of large derelicts."

"I've heard stories," Annis replied composedly.

"Really?" Garamite said. "Then you should be well qualified to tackle it, shouldn't you? Belon, ready the transfer tube. Annis, since you came on board you've done nothing but aggravate Belon and annoy me. Granted there have been faults on both sides..." He glanced at Belon, but the latter did not seem to be listening. "... and also granted you're one of the best pilots in the quadrant. That doesn't excuse your insubordination. Go and suit up. You'll go across to the derelict, scout around for any signs of life, and if you find none report to me and we'll arrange to take it on to Arvid Three. You can pilot it if you like."

"But..." Annis began.

"That is an order, Annis," Garamite said.

"Transfer tube primed, Mal," Belon reported. "D'you want me to go across with her?"

"Last time I left you alone with Annis you were in hospital for two weeks with cracked ribs...not to mention the other damage." Garamite smiled grimly. "No, let her handle it on her own."

As Annis brushed past Belon he leered at her.

"I'll be waiting this end of the tube," he promised. "In case you get frightened."

Annis smiled to herself.

Two minutes later she was standing in the mouth of the tube.

"Lock tracer," Belon said. "Communicator. What's that?"

"My lucky piece," Annis said. "Any objections?"

"Let her be, Belon," Garamite called.

Then Annis set off across the gap between the two ships, _déja vu_ making her want to laugh aloud and run. The lock tracer was set to the correct circuit, and she triggered it while still several paces from the huge round hatch. As he expected, there was a few seconds' pause while Zen analysed the lock signal and determined its harmlessness, then the valve began to swing open. She dashed forward, lifted the bracelet that had been her "lucky piece" and shouted:

"Zen! Close the door, hard about, ahead standard by two!"

The door swung shut.

"Annis! What the hell..." came from the communicator in her hand. She deliberately dropped it and ground it to ruin under her heel.

As she looked down the narrow corridor, all her senses tingled. She hardly dared to breathe lest it all fade away. It had been such a long time—not long in a human life, but preternaturally stretched for her into subjective years of loss and longing.

Slowly she paced along the corridor, and on to the flight deck.

In all her lean, hard life there had been only one moment of true openness. Only one being had come to her, gently stripped away all her barriers and defences, all her pretence and self-delusion, had known her completely and utterly, without constraint...and had not judged.

Many men and women had said to her, in their various ways, "I love you," both before and since that moment; and all, in their various ways, had presumed on that very shaky basis the right to judge her. At last she had concluded that no human bond of any kind existed without the taint of morality, and that the only true kinship she could ever know had been lost to her forever.

"Zen," she said, and the catch in her voice on that single word would have amazed anyone who might have claimed to know her.

+JENNA STANNIS,+ Zen said, +WELCOME.+ The voice was as dispassionate as ever, but Jenna needed no outward display of passion.

Long ago, she had touched a certain control plate on this flight deck, and into the darkness of her soul Zen had come to know...and to be known. The union had been two-way: Jenna and the Liberator had for a few seconds been one entity, and Jenna had remained thereafter sensitive to the great ship, linked indissolubly with it and with Zen. Careful at all times never to acknowledge it in the presence of the other humans, unwilling even to admit it to herself, she had recognised it as a fact at last only when she had felt the pain of the destruction at Terminal, and had made herself realise that what had soured all her pleasures and turned the universe grey around her was not the absence of Blake, or of Avon or any of the others, but the loss of the Liberator itself.

"I thought that fool Avon had..." she began, and had to break off. "I thought you had been destroyed," she said. "What happened?"

+RE-INTEGRATION WAS EFFECTED ACCORDING TO EMERGENCY PROCEDURES,+ Zen said blandly. +ALL SYSTEMS ARE NOW FUNCTIONING NORMALLY: STATUS IS FIRM.+

Jenna shivered and hugged herself. Her insides seemed to be melting; _this is ridiculous,_ she thought, _if anyone saw me now they'd have me locked up._

+INFORMATION,+ Zen said. +AN OBLIGATION EXISTS TO LOCATE VILA RESTAL, KERR AVON, CALLY, DAYNA MELLANBY, DEL TARRANT AND ROJ BLAKE.+

Jenna ignored the two strange names, obviously replacements for Blake and herself. "Obligation, Zen?" she said. "Why?"

+THE LIBERATOR FAILED THEM.+

In the midst of her emotional confusion Jenna almost laughed. "What?"

+VILA RESTAL ISSUED AN ORDER. SYSTEMS WERE UNABLE TO COMPLY. AN OBLIGATION THEREFORE EXISTS.+ Jenna could feel questioning, almost pleading, behind the bald statement: Zen was asking her to understand him, to see that even if the orders he had been given were the cause of his destruction, he was responsible for allowing himself to be destroyed and so failing to obey those orders.

It was a particularly unhuman way of looking at things...but it was more comprehensible to Jenna than the shades of good, bad and expedient that most humans thought in.

Besides, she thought, she had words for Avon.

"All right, Zen," she said. "We'll fulfil your obligation."

Zen made no reply—it was neither a command nor a question—but she sensed his pleasure, and relief.

A few stops along the way wouldn't do any harm, though, she reasoned. After all, it would be a rather dim reflection upon her if she turned up with an empty ship.

And she had to do something about the atmosphere control. Her eyes seemed to be watering uncontrollably.

************

"Erwin?"

"Morfa. About time."

"Relieving you."

"Thanks. Great sun, what a day! I'm baked."

"It's these long shifts. I'll be glad when they find whoever it is they're looking for."

"Do me a favour! Six weeks it's been. He'd have to be a ghost to have got past them for this long. Personally I think he is."

"Any idea who it is?"

"Blake, some say. Others say it's one of the Commander's blue-eyed boys. There's only been one with her for nearly that long. Jivaz was on the carpet for making up one of his songs about her."

"I know, I heard it."

"Rugin says it's just an exercise, toughening us up for the observer, just in case she runs a snap inspection."

"She?"

"Only Commissioner Sleer in person, that's all."

"Bit of a long exercise if you ask me."

"Well, Rugin's full of it, you know him. Here, I can't stand here nattering, I need my beauty sleep, you know."

"Can’t argue with that. So long, Erwin."

***************

"Kasso!"

"Wh ...? Oh, Ziranne, sorry."

"When did you last get a night' s sleep?"

"Ug. Don't know. Any news. Have they found him?"

"No, love. This is something else. Commissioner Sleer has been appointed the High Council's observer for Gauda Prime and is due here in six days. We are to render her every assistance. That's what it says here, anyway."

"Oh. So?"

"So, love, I suggest you do as I have done and go and see the medics. You look as though you've been on watch continually for the last month, which you have, but Sleer doesn't know that and wouldn't like it if she did. Get some electrosleep under your belt and start eating properly again, and you'll be the smart commander for when that harridan shows up."

"Suppose I'd better. Are the squads still out?"

"Combing the city and blockading the spaceport. People don't like it, but there's been no trouble so far."

"Are they checking the other cities? The villages? He might be anywhere on the planet."

"We don't have that big a garrison, Kasso, and I can't see Federation Headquarters authorising a shipment of three battalions to find one lost man. I've got men on the gates. If he's here, he'll be found."

"Ziranne..."

"I know, love. Now get down to the medical unit."

"All right."

*************

The day the stone turned green, Blake donned the robes of an obscure religious order based three planets away and left the rank, rat-infested cellar where he had been hiding.

As far as his sources of information went, Powers' predictions seemed to be standing the test of time. Only a week before, Zirok had ceded to the Federation, producing exactly the effects the self-styled demiurge (whatever it meant; no-one Blake had been able to consult seemed to know the word) had suggested. The latest news of interest concerned a petty warlord halfway across the quadrant by the name of Zukan. If events ran true to form, Avon and his companions would be burning their bridges behind them and setting off for Gauda Prime very shortly.

There was other news as well, quite intriguing news, but Blake was reserving judgment on that. He had managed to believe several impossible things in recent weeks, but there was no sense pushing one’s luck.

Blake did not pretend to understand how he could be still here on Donnaiya while, if the prediction was consistent, he was supposed to be already on G.P. Still, he thought to himself irrationally, I have no other immediate plans.

Several squads of troopers passed on him on the way to the port. They had been active for an extraordinarily long time: looking for him, Blake assumed, and turned his face to the wall.

*************

Deeva, till recently leader of the resistance on Gauda Prime, sighed heavily as the burly figure quitted the computer room. Legends were all very nice in themselves, but when they turned up and took over what one had been regarding, not without a certain amount of pardonable pride, as one's own operation, it was surely not inexcusable to feel just a touch put out.

Deeva felt very put out.

He reached into his pocket and brought out his silver key-ring. It was a never-failing comfort to him in times of stress, and this was a time of stress if he knew one.

Roj Blake.

He had no way of checking Blake's story, of course: Blake had been an unperson as far as the Federation public data-net was concerned since before the Gauda Prime computer had been built, and he, Deeva, had never met him personally till now. Yet something in the unwinking stare of that single dun-coloured eye carried total conviction.

Deeva could not stare into that single orb for very long without giving way.

But it was intolerable. Deeva had been quietly recruiting individuals to the rebel cause, checking them through the central computer and making sure of their _bona fides_ before moving to contact them. Then along had come Blake, with his personal-touch routine and his domineering manner. Now the growth of the rebel force on G.P. had been slowed to a disquieting degree, and worse, had become totally dependent on Blake's presence.

Deeva touched the cool silver to his bottom lip, and brooded. If this were the Blake of whom he had heard stories, then he had changed, and Deeva was suspicious of people who changed.

But what had you to go on, when the computers failed?

And then, of course, there was Orac.

Blake kept dropping hints about Orac. How Orac could do this and Orac could do that and wouldn't it be nice if we had Orac. That, Deeva imagined, was the purpose of the supposedly subtle clue-messages Blake kept getting him to put out: he was hoping that the legendary Orac would pick them up and guide its current owners to G.P. and into Blake's clutches.

Deeva did not envy them if they fell for it. Nor did he see much need for the subterfuge. Certainly another computer would be useful, but the stories about Orac's supposed capabilities left Deeva somewhat cold. A computer, after all, was a computer.

But there was nothing Deeva could do. Everyone in the base was smitten with Blake's charisma; not even the comic-opera bounty hunter guise could dull their admiration for the first and greatest of the rebels.

Deeva nibbled his silver key-ring, and felt trapped.

*************

The _Archbold_ fell into orbit around Donnaiya with all the grace of a ruptured Kairos arachnoid.

"Well, that was fun," Garamite snarled, feeling himself all over. "You're losing your touch, Belon, I still have all my internal organs."

Belon made no reply. Relations between the two men had been strained to breaking point since Annis' abrupt departure: neither of them quite understood what had happened, except that their pilot had made off with the derelict, herself, and their only lock tracer, and had written off the transfer tube into the bargain. The repairs had cost more than the cargo had made, and Garamite had been struggling ever since to recoup his losses.

Well, this was Belon’s last flight. Word was that there was a pilot on Donnaiya looking for work, and Garamite had at last scraped together enough credit to hire one.

No cool blondes with murky pasts need apply.

"Free trader Archbold to Donnaiya Port Control," Garamite said into the ship-to-planet communicator. "Requesting landing clearance."

"Archbold, we read you. Please hold your orbit. The Port is operating under maximum security and there will consequently be a delay while a landing bay is cleared for your occupancy."

"Charming," Belon commented. "Suppose we were in distress?"

"It'd be tough for us, wouldn't it?" Garamite grunted. "Port Control, we acknowledge. Holding orbit."

An uncomfortable silence fell.

"Another ship," Belon said at last. "Coming in fast. Looks like Federation."

"Oh, great. What's the betting..." Garamite turned knobs on the communicator, and certain circuits about which Federation Security would have been very interested to hear came into operation.

"Federation scout 281 to Donnaiya Port," said a voice. "Commissioner Sleer requesting landing clearance."

"281, we read you," the Port replied, in the same tone as before. "Please hold your orbit. The Port is operating under maximum sec—"

Another voice broke in, a cold, hard female voice. "Perhaps you did not read us correctly, Donnaiya Port. This is Commissioner Sleer, accredited representative of the Federation High Council. I want landing clearance and I want it now."

"Commissioner...yes, Commissioner." Garamite frantically restored the settings in time to hear the same voice saying: "...sorry, Archbold, but we've had a priority request for landing clearance and I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little longer. We ..."

"Like hell we will!" Garamite snapped. Something had suddenly boiled over inside him. By the gods, it was enough. "We're coming in, and you’d damned well better have a bay ready!" To Belon he shouted: "Take us down, Belon, crash dive!"

"Crash dive it is, Mal," Belon grinned.

And as the Archbold tore into the atmosphere, Garamite settled back in his seat, grim satisfaction competing with nausea on his face.

"That'll teach you to jump the queue on Maleus Garamite, Commissioner whatever-your-name-is," he mumbled.

**************

Blake felt a nudge on his back and turned round.

"Hello," Powers said. "Get to Landing Bay Nine. There's a ship coming in that could use a pilot. It'll get you to G.P."

"Landing Bay Nine?" Blake repeated, but Powers had already vanished. Blake turned again, and came face to face with a craggy-featured black man in a medical doctor's uniform, being supported by his wife, a handsome blonde in her middle years.

"I tell you, Kris, I can walk by myself," the man was saying. Then his startling blue eyes focused on Blake.,

"Lan..." The woman began.

"Kris, it's him!" the doctor exclaimed. "Here, you—"

Blake was already running, pushing through the crowds, drawing his robe about his face. He heard the doctor shouting behind him, the cries fading reassuringly, but he dared not slacken his pace.

A side turning came up and he took it. _TO LANDING BAY NINE_ , it said.

As Blake burst out into sunlight, dodging the guards at the passage's end, a ship was just opening its hatch on the pad. Two men appeared in the gap.

With a feeling of having been manipulated, Blake leaped for the hatch. The two men gave back in startlement as a shot zinged off the hull of the ship.

"Close up," Blake panted. "Gauda Prime. Pilot. Close up. Take off."

"What?" Belon said. Garamite was already re-closing the hatch.

"I'm a pilot," Blake said. "I need to get to Gauda Prime."

"Oh, yes?" Garamite sneered. “And why the hell should we—“

" _Archbold_ ," said the communicator. "Please open your hatch. A complaint has been filed against you on behalf of Commissioner Sleer, and you are harbouring a dangerous rebel. Please open your hatch."

"Sleer?" Blake said.

Garamite growled.

"Some days just aren't worth it. Belon, take her up the same way you brought her down."

"All right, Mal." Belon seemed pleased at the prospect.

"And as for you," Garamite said over his shoulder to Blake, "you can strap in, stay where you are, or do what the hell you like."

Blake hastily got up and followed Garamite forward.

"Er, Commissioner," Donnaiya Port said hesitantly, "that landing bay is clear again."

"I am aware of that," Sleer's voice said icily. "You, and the guards on the landing bay, and everyone else involved in this incident, may consider yourselves under arrest. I shall be deciding on the precise nature of the charges before I leave. For now, if we could have clearance to land I should be very grateful."

"Yes, Commissioner," Donnaiya Port said in strangled tones.

***************

"I don't believe it," Kasso groaned. "Pipped for a landing bay by a ship which just happens to be there when someone who might have been Blake comes running out and which then takes off for parts unknown with the might-have-been Blake on board. She'll be ripe for murder."

Ziranne nodded. "Ours.”

They waited, stiff in their dress uniforms, at the gate to Landing Bay Nine, which by now had been cleared of extraneous people by the two squads of guards not involved in the ongoing search for Teleb. These guards now formed a line on either side of the hatch of the Federation ship as it slowly hinged open to allow the spare, black-clad figure of Commissioner Sleer to emerge.

The Commissioner, Kasso thought idly, looks about as well, and as happy, as I feel.

Her face, under normal circumstances probably quite attractive, was drawn, pale and overly made-up. Her dark hair was cruelly cropped to within millimetres of the roots. She moved with a feline grace that yet seemed tinged with self-burlesque, and there was something in those hazel eyes that produced in Kasso a vertiginous sense that Sleer was not looking quite at her, nor at Ziranne, nor at anyone…unless maybe someone stood just behind them, and smiled for Sleer alone, and yet mocked her as well.

The promise in her eyes was a suicide pact. Kasso barely managed to conceal her shudder.

"Commander Kasso," Sleer said graciously. "I imagine you have been informed of the disgraceful incident that greeted me on my arrival."

"Commissioner, I cannot apologise enough ..." Kasso began.

"Please." Sleer raised a hand. "Once all those involved have been executed I shall forget the whole sorry matter." She looked at Kasso. "Yes, Commander, I said _executed_. My personal guard are already taking care of that little task.” She smiled into Kasso’s stricken face. “For your information, Blake is still a wanted criminal. It has been alleged that your troopers allowed him to escape, which in a Port supposedly operating at maximum security amounts to collaboration with a known rebel. I'm sure I don't have to tell you your duty." She smiled. "But that is not relevant to my main purpose for calling here. You command some twelve squads of Federation guards, I believe, though I see only two here."

"The rest are all out on assignment, Commissioner, apart from the Headquarters guard detail and their relief," Kasso said.

"Recall them," Sleer said offhandedly.

"What?"

"I don't believe I need to repeat myself, Commander." Sleer brushed past them and continued talking without looking round. "I need all your troops to accompany me to Gauda Prime immediately. Whatever assignment you have them on can wait. Oh. You will of course also be accompanying me, as my aides. Shall we go?" Now she turned, and her smile made Kasso think of animals she had read about on the outer worlds, whose only function was to eat, and eat, and keep eating until they died of overweight and their young ate their way out of the corpse's belly to begin again.

For one insane moment Kasso saw herself lunging at Sleer, bringing her down and striking her head again and again and again against the ground until one or the other gave way. She wanted to scream at the older woman, to make Teleb's name her battlecry and her deathsong.

But she was Federation born and trained, many hundreds of credits invested in preventing her from doing just that.

"Give the order, Subcommander Ziranne," she said in a voice that sounded as though it ought to have been buried long ago.

"As you say, Commander," Ziranne replied tonelessly. He moved to one side, taking out his communicator.

Kasso's eyes remained fixed on Sleer.

"Shall we go?" the Commissioner repeated.

Numbly Kasso followed Sleer.

*************

"All right," Garamite said. "Gauda Prime. Nice flying, by the way. How much time do you need?"

"He'll not be coming back," said Powers. Blake jumped. "But if you go to Kivaar and check the safe-deposit box that this key opens, you'll find the name and address of a qualified pilot who's in a spot of local bother and could do with some employment—under the Rose."

"Under the Rose?" Garamite echoed. "Right, Mr Powers. Thank you." He took the key. "I don't understand it, but don't try and explain," he said to Blake. "Just get out of my ship."

Blake needed no second bidding. He trotted down the ramp and on to the grassy soil of Gauda Prime. The feeling of déja vu was strong upon him: this was close to where he had appeared before with Powers, only this time it was real.

Try as he might, Blake could not detect any difference.

"Right." Powers stood beside him, rubbing his hands briskly. "Things are flowing a good deal better now. I can relax a bit. I spy with my little eye something beginning with '!'. The end is in sight."

"The end?" Blake said. "For whom?"

"The ancient priests of Deugaerth," said Powers, beginning to skip childishly over the grass, "had an oracle they called the Mirror of the Sky. It was a silver bowl filled with a mixture of mercury, the blood of a virgin lizard and honey from the sacred beehives. It was infallible, but very difficult to control. They had a saying about it."

"And what was that?"

" _Send not to ask for whom the bowl tells._ "

"Oh," Blake said.

Powers glared at him. "Uncultured pleb," he muttered. " Now listen. Are you familiar with the workings of the standard Federation guard's paragun?"

"Vaguely," Blake said. "I've never made a study of it but..."

"Shut up, there’s a good chap. Can you disarm one so it delivers a punch but doesn't kill?"

"Yes, given the opportunity."

"Good. In that case we may be able to get some of your friends out of it as well as you and Avon. This way." Powers set off at a dead run. Blake followed, and ran straight into Powers’ outstretched arm.

"Hide," Powers said urgently, and they dived into a shrub which quivered, lost a good many of its leaves, but held on to enough to screen them from sight.

"There's a Fed troop carrier about to land here. When the hatch opens I'll try for a local timestop, and you'll have as long as I can manage to nobble their popguns. I can't guarantee that you'll have time to do anything at all...all I can give you is the chance. The closer it gets to time the less I can do."

"All right," Blake said. "I'll try."

"You'll know when it goes off. You'll have a few seconds after that to get out and clear. And don't try any funny stuff. As long as the gun delivers a stunning blow, enough to knock someone over, then there's a chance it'll be one of the ones that gets used on your friends. If it does nothing then it won't be."

"Appearances again," Blake said.

"Exactly."

The troop carrier descended on a cloud of dust. Powers was muttering under his breath and doing things with a small sand-glass. As Blake watched he turned it sideways and balanced it on his outstretched forefinger.

Suddenly a peculiar reddish light overlay everything, and Powers hissed: "Get moving!"

Blake ran for the hatch of the troop carrier, which had frozen half open.

Inside he saw red twilight, and frozen Federation guards. Blake hesitated a moment, then dashed to the nearest guard and picked up his rifle.

It took an age to get the casing open, and the red light made it difficult to spot the colour-coded wires. Blake worked feverishly; the model, to his great relief, had not been updated and the job required no tools. Frantically Blake finished, replaced the casing and the rifle and turned to the next, picked it up...

...and dropped it, just as the red light vanished.

Blake ran, half fell out of the hatch and scrambled back into the shrub just as the mechanism ground back into action.

"How many?" Powers mouthed at him.

Blake ruefully help up one finger.

Powers flung his head back and snorted, eyes rolling heavenward, then dived for cover again.

"I don't care who knocked it out of your hand, Trooper Erwin," a voice was saying, a familiar voice. Blake stared as Servalan came down the ramp, followed by the first squad of troopers, one of whom was looking distinctly shamefaced, even through his helmet and mask. Blake watched, feeling slightly guilty, as Servalan—he begged her pardon, he meant Sleer—continued to upbraid the trooper.

Finally, her lust for blood sated for the moment, Sleer marched back up the ramp and beckoned impatiently. Two individuals in the uniform of high-ranking Intelligence officers lead the remaining troopers, in number about twelve squads, down the ramp. They mustered on the grass, and Sleer paced up and down, inspecting them.

"Your orders are," she said, "to use all means necessary to take the rebel base on this planet. Squads ten and twelve have been issued with explosive devices to gain entrance to this base. The rest of you will spread out from the two entry points and work inwards towards the centre. Nothing must stop you. If you see the man who has been identified to you as Roj Blake, take him alive. All others, shoot on sight and shoot to kill. Is that understood?" She moved aside. "Move out."

As the troopers dog-trotted off into the trees, Sleer turned to the two officers. "On my way here," she said, "I received messages purporting to be from Roj Blake on this planet, and obviously designed to fetch to him Kerr Avon and his companions. Now, when Avon arrives, we will be waiting, with a real Blake to barter for Orac."

"But..." Kasso began. "In that case it couldn't have been Blake at the spaceport."

"No," Sleer said with a smile. "Of course it couldn't. How silly of me."

"Those people at the port—you killed—“ Kasso broke off.

"They failed in their duty," Sleer said harshly. "The Federation does not tolerate failure, Commander.”

"Rah, rah, rah," Powers muttered. "Into the Valley of Death. Damn the tarpaulins. I must be getting old."

"Follow me," Sleer commanded, and swept out of the clearing. Kasso and Ziranne followed.

"Who are those two?" Blake said. "And how can I be there when I'm here?"

"They're the garrison commander of Donnaiya and one of her two subcommanders," Powers said. "In that answer is contained also the answer to your other question. Let's follow on, and take our places for the grand finale."

************

Blake, closely followed by Arlen, raced into the control centre and stopped dead.

"It's him, isn't it?" said the young fellow called Tarrant.

"It's him all right," said one of the other two men. Avon? Vila? Blake decided to try to get them to identify themselves for him.

"Avon," he said, stepping forward, down the steps. "I've been waiting for you."

"Stand still!" the third man said. He held a Federation gun at rest position. He was staring at Blake as if trying to resolve a paradox in his head, as if his life depended on his believing a lie.

For his part, Blake felt just as confused. He had been sure, all this time, that as soon as he saw the faces of his friends some chord of memory would be touched off, something would come back.

Still there was nothing but blankness, nothing.

"He's sold us, Avon," Tarrant said. "Even you."

 _No_ , Blake wanted to say, _you're jumping the gun, it's too soon._

"Is it true?" Avon's mind seemed to be racing out of control. He swayed on his feet. "Have you betrayed us?" He was pleading. "Have _you_...betrayed _me_?"

 _This isn't right,_ Blake thought. _This isn't working._

He said, "Tarrant doesn't understand."

"Neither do I!" Avon said.

"I set all this up." Blake took another step forward.

"Yes!" Avon's face closed into a pattern Blake should have been able to recognise. He raised the gun.

Blake said something, but the words were lost. There was a sound, a punch in his gut, not hard, and something began draining out of him, very slowly, very quietly, like sand from a glass, like molten metal from his heel. For a moment his head whirled and everything became uncertain: then he took a grip of himself, and his good eye locked unswervingly on the stranger Avon. He took a step towards him, wondering vaguely why it was such an effort.

Another punch. And another. The drain quickened. He ploughed on, aware now of a need for haste. His life was packed tightly within him like damp sugar: now hanging unsupported, it could fall at any moment. He gripped the shoulders of the man in front of him, his friend whom he could not remember, and tried to speak his name.

"A...von..."

Then all his energy fell away, and he sagged to his knees and then to the floor.

Just for a moment Teleb was left alone, wondering why it had all happened, and what had become of his friends. He hoped Kasso and Ziranne would come soon to take him home.

Then that, too, dimmed and went out.

************

...Avon smiled and raised his gun, sighting through the ring of troopers around him at the lithe figure in the doorway.

"Put it down, Avon," Servalan said chidingly. "It would be a futile gesture." She gestured. "Get his gun."

"Avon made no move as the weapon was wrested from his hand.

"How nice," Servalan purred, "to see you at last...up against the wall." She moved forward, leaving a clear line of sight between the tableau within the room and the man and woman just behind her.

"TELEB!"

Servalan was knocked violently aside. She turned, ready to rend whoever it had been with her tongue, and stared at Kasso in dumbstruck amazement as the Commander cradled the dead man's head in her arms.

"Teleb?" Ziranne moved to stand over Kasso, and looked at the dead face in the fluctuating red light. The curly hair was longer, and the beard had been replaced by unshaven stubble...but there could be no mistake.

"It's him all right," the said, the words like the beating of iron gongs.

"But it _can't_ be," Servalan was saying.

Avon was shaking his head slowly from side to side.

"Madam Commissioner," Kasso said fiercely through her tears, "kindly credit me with enough intelligence to recognise my own lover." She bent over the dead man again, dismissing Servalan as irrelevant.

Servalan stared. Now that she looked closely, through the cruel scar and the weatherworn quality, there were subtle differences that added up to a wrongness.

She tried to regain some ground. "I deeply regret this, Commander Kasso," she said. "As you know, it was no part of..."

""It's not Blake?" Avon murmured. He seemed only now to be realising.

Kasso raised her head and raked them both with a scornful stare.

"Which one of you was it?" she demanded, in a voice like tearing canvas. "Whose game was he part of?"

"Ours, I'm afraid," said a voice from the other end of the room.

Servalan, Kasso and Ziranne looked up and froze.

"Blake..." The name issued from Servalan's lips like a prayer.

"Can you do anything with the guards?" Blake said quietly.

"I'll try," Powers said. He descended to the small group by the door and lifted Avon bodily out of the way. "Commander Kasso, Subcommander Ziranne," he said, speaking very quickly and quietly. "I cannot tell you how sorry I am that this unfortunate incident should have occurred. However I feel I should offer some advice; You have no hope of holding either Roj Blake or Kerr Avon, they have in fact long since made their escape, but the woman who accompanied you here is almost as valuable being none other than ex-Supreme Commander, ex-President Servalan, wanted by the High Council for several very good reasons. May I suggest your organise your troops and secure her before she escapes." As he spoke he gestured rapidly with his two hands in front of Kasso's and Ziranne's faces. "And that really is it, I'm afraid," he said, strolling back towards Blake. "Finito, Benito. No more power."

Servalan attempted to pull herself together. "Guards—"

"Guards," Kasso said, getting up, "hold this woman." At once the troopers left Avon and moved to block Servalan's escape. Avon did not move.

Blake moved round in front of him. "Wake up, Avon."

Avon's eyes focused on Blake at last, as if waking up. "What happened?" he said.

"The cavalry came over the hill and spoiled your death scene," Powers said. "I never had much time for westerns myself. Go on, quickly."

"Wait," Blake said. "What about the gun I sabotaged?"

"Try kicking all the bodies," Powers said, "all over, as hard as you can, with special attention to the groin area, till..."

"All right, all right," Vila groaned, sitting up. " I can take a hint. Who was it said _Hell is carrying on where you left off_? I'm coming. Just don't try and explain anything to me yet, I'm willing to take it all on faith, with this headache it's easier." He struggled to his feet.

Blake looked down at the broken body of Teleb. PAWNS BROKEN WHILE YOU WAIT. Suddenly it wasn't funny any more.

Behind him Powers said softly, "Absolute power is only another absolute, like death. Someone had to die. A life for a life. Read any good grimoire."

"But why him?" Blake said.

"Why anyone?" the demiurge countered. "He looked like you, and he was given a path, and he followed it, just as you and Avon did. Did you expect me to furnish someone who would die unmourned? They don't exist. Everyone is indispensable."

Kasso looked round in wonderment. These men who had taken Teleb's life, whom for some reason she could not harm, seemed as grieved by his death as she.

"Quick, you fool," Servalan was saying furiously to Ziranne. "He'll get away if you don't wake up. He’s standing right there, man."

"You can't fool me like that, Servalan," Ziranne said patiently.

"Someone had to be Blake," Powers said, seemingly on the defensive for the first time since Blake had met him. "He fitted, and I adjusted him till he fitted perfectly. Cause and effect all tie up, oh, it's very neat, ask Orac. A line through the bloody tangled mess of infinity. What are you waiting for?" He glared at Blake in white-hot rage. "Get the hell out of here before I change my mind. I didn't save your life so you could moralise at me, you narrow-minded prig. Go on, GET OUT!!" He picked up a gun by its barrel and threw it awkwardly at Blake. It went wide.

"Come on, Blake," Avon said, seemingly in command of himself once more. Blake turned and left, and Avon and Vila fell into step behind him.

The last they heard was Powers' enraged voice:

"And as for you, you third-rate Messalina ..."

"What was all that about?" Vila said, as they entered the flier bay. Blake was too full of his own thoughts to reply, and Avon immediately went to a certain flier parked near the exit ramp. "All right, don't mind me," Vila went on. "I'm used to being ignored. Blake shows up with a madman in a purple dressing gown and rescues us all from the jaws of death, me, I get ignored."

"He didn't rescue all of us," Avon said, returning with Orac in his hands. "Not that I'm complaining, you understand," he continued, turning to Blake. "I simply wish you would make up your mind once and for all whether you are alive or dead."

"With Servalan here, and without a ship," Vila said gloomily, "we're dead." He brightened. "Unless..."

Blake shook his head. "The ship I came on left. There's a troop carrier about half a mile that way." He pointed.

"Half a mile!" Vila yelped.

There was a sound, not unlike the sound one might hear if unexpectedly buzzed by a low-flying kettledrum.

"But I…rather think I can provide a better option," Blake went on, his face breaking into a smile as he looked down at Vila's feet.

"What..." Vila poked the pile of small black circlets with his toe. "Didn't notice those there before," he muttered.

"Take a closer look, Vila," Blake invited.

Obediently Vila stooped down. "Bracelets," he said blankly. "They look like..." He froze in mid-sentence. A light came into his eyes, and a grin spread comically across his face from ear to ear. "I don't believe it," he breathed, raising his eyes to the roof.

Avon grabbed one of the bracelets, letting Orac swing from one hand to do so. "Blake..." His eyes narrowed. "How long have you known about this?"

"Well, I've only _known_ since they arrived," Blake said. "I think, Vila, you'll find two contacts on the inner side have been shorted across so that the bracelets could be teleported on their own. Just take off the wires. No, Avon, I didn't know for certain. But when recent news bulletins were full of a new pirate menace whose ship was faster and stronger than any other in space, I couldn't help suspecting."

"But who is up there?" Avon demanded.

Blake picked up a bracelet. "Let's find out, shall we?"

"The Liberator." Vila tasted the name. " I knew old Zen wasn't beaten."

"You just said you didn't believe it," Avon reminded him.

"Blake to Liberator," Blake said. "Do you read me?"

"I read you," a familiar voice replied. "Prepare for transport."

Avon seemed to come to a decision. "Very well. Logic and sanity are abrogated as of this moment. Blake and Jenna are back from the dead, the Liberator is waiting to whisk us away, and I am the Sultan of Baghdad."

Vila bowed low. "Your magic carpet awaits, O mighty one."

Blake raised his bracelet again. "The Sultan of Baghdad, plus two, to teleport, Jenna."

A white nimbus shimmered around them for a moment. Then there came the kettledrum sound again: the nimbus exploded outward and vanished.

The landing bay was empty.

***********

Blake, Avon and Vila materialised on the teleport platform.

"Well, Jenna," Avon said coolly, "where did you pick this up?"

"It fell off the back of a cargo pod," Jenna returned.

"That's what they all say," said Vila absently.

"Apparently we all rather underestimated the System," Blake said. "Is everything shipshape, Jenna?"

"I polished the binnacle myself only this morning." Jenna seemed very pleased with herself.

"How much?" Blake said gently.

"In all, you mean?" Jenna totted up. "Oh, about half a million credits. Nothing like what we had, of course, but enough to live on for a while. Are you going to make me put it back?" She pouted.

"I'll think about it," Blake smiled, and made for the door.

"Avon..." Jenna said.

Avon waited. Vila brushed past and followed Blake.

"What?"

"Oh," Jenna said, "nothing." _But you'll give me the full story of what happened on Terminal, Kerr Avon,_ she thought, _if I have to wring it out of you._

***************

Later, on the flight deck, Blake told his version of events.

"You expect us to believe all that?" Avon demanded. "Demiurges, magic, timestops...you really expect us to believe it?"

"Not really," Blake said tiredly, but Avon was not listening.

"Blake, you and I have both had experience of drug- and electronically induced hallucinations. They are easy to produce and carry total conviction. As for the timestop, so-called, a simple metabolic accelerator would have the same effect."

"You sleep for eight hours minimum after one of those," Vila said.

"Avon, this was no drug..." Blake began, and then broke off and stared.

"What is it now?" Avon said. He followed Blake's gaze to a point just above his own head.

He just had time to register the big shiny red bucket with _FIRE_ stencilled on it in black before it upended itself in leisurely fashion over his head, and a gallon of pure cool spring water cascaded down up on him. The bucket paused, righted itself, bobbed, and then descended in front of Avon's dripping gaze and placed itself decorously on the floor as if to say _And now, ladies and gentlemen, you may inspect me_.

Blake stifled a grin.

"I think we'd better leave it at that," he said.

EPILOGUE

"Of course magic exists," Orac stated. "It is a very apt portmanteau term for those forces which human scientific research has barely begun to investigate: those forces which, for instance, enabled the Zen computer to project its data matrix into a specially prepared colloidal mnemonic storage solution, and subsequently manipulate the molecules of that solution in such as way as to effect re-integration of the entire ship: those forces which I myself utilise to tap and control all systems fitted with tarial cells: those forces which the alien from the sarcophagus used to great effect upon yourselves: those forces which..."

"All right, Orac, we get the picture," Blake said.

"I'm still not convinced, Blake," Avon said, towelling himself vigorously, "but the question is not sufficiently urgent to require a definite answer. One which, I think, is, is that of our immediate plans."

"Why ask me?" Blake said, spreading his hands.

Avon hooded his eyes. "I just felt you might have some idea."

"No," Blake said. "You and I have both had our chances. I got the Liberator blown up at Star One; you lost it at Terminal and got yourselves trapped on G.P."

He turned away from Avon. "I think it's time we asked someone else."

Vila nodded complacently, then stiffened and looked up slowly, his face draining of colour. "Who...m-me?" he croaked.

"Blake, I think that's the best idea you've had in some time," Avon declared. "Of all the people who have joined us on the Liberator and the Scorpio, Vila has always been the readiest with criticism and suggestions. It is about time he bestowed on us the full benefit of his strategic philosophy."

"B-but ..." Vila began.

"Come on, Vila," Blake said. "You never wanted anything to do with all this rebellion business, the dangers and the work and so on. You have a ship, one of the fastest and strongest ever built, you have a willing crew, and no strings attached. What do you want to do with it?"

Vila gulped. He stared into space, nibbling his lower lip. He poured himself a glass of soma and drank it off in one swallow. He picked at his tunic, trying to remove an imaginary speck of fluff. He burped, excused himself and shifted in his seat. He scratched his head, bit a fingernail and reamed out his ear with it.

Finally, he said, in a very small voice:

"I'll take the rebellion. It's easier."

"Start again, Blake?" Avon said, his voice and face unreadable.

Blake nodded. "From the top," he said. "Only this time we do it right."

  
  


 


End file.
